The present invention relates to a communication quality measurement system, the device, the management server, and the method in which communication quality between opposite communication quality measurement devices in a communication network is measured based on results of transmitting and receiving packets for measuring communication quality between the opposite communication quality measurement devices.
Conventionally, network management of IP (Internet Protocol) network has focused on traffic in data system. Recently, however, amount of traffic, the characteristics, and moreover requirements for an IP network have been changed by emergence of new IP services such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and video distribution.
As a result, causes for communication faults in a network have been diversified and the range and the degree of influence by a communication fault vary depending on services, making immediate response to a communication fault increasingly difficult. Under these circumstances, technologies to measure and manage network quality and to identify performance deterioration and a point where communication fault occurs in a large-scale network quickly and in detail have become important in order to overcome these problems of an IP network.
As an example of the conventional technology of the above, a technology is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-101583. The technology reduces amount of information transmitted and received between a network quality evaluation device and a probe manager that manages communication quality based on extracted packet information and thereby reduces effect on traffic due to communication quality management.
However, conventional technologies represented by the above have the following problems. That is a range of IP services have been extending from a core network to an access network, and quality measurement and management for each IP service and quality management at almost End-to-End level have been sought after. More specifically, demand for network and service quality management over diverse access devices, and customer premises equipment have been increasing.
Under these circumstances, a large number of communication quality measurement devices, access devices, and customer premises equipment to which quality management agents are implemented are required to be installed in a wide area. However, installing such large numbers of communication quality measurement devices is not realistic in terms of cost. As a result, management is performed at only a limited number of measurement bases, and it is difficult to identify the precise point where communication fault occurs.
The disclosed communication quality measurement system, communication quality measurement device, management server and communication quality management method are intended to overcome the above drawbacks. The object is to immediately and precisely identify a point where communication fault occurs by measuring communication quality at every measurement basis in a network at low cost.